Pax Americana
US superpower after World War II resulted in heavy sacrifices to maintain peace then many wars that developed our military superiority as other nations diminished theirs.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
The burden of hegemony has been heavy for America. And the postwar destiny of this country is found in the dialectic between peace and war. Trump is trying to untangle this web, but he must lift the weight of a long history to do so.
After World War II ended in 1945, we did not inaugurate an era of genuine peace, but rather a new political norm. This postwar global new world order, in which the United States of America assumed the sovereign prerogative to define friends and foes, meant that our leadership came with certain responsibilities. We co-opted our European allies into extracting peace from the rest of the world.
On a planetary scale, we became the sole superpower and thus set the international agenda. To understand the peculiar and tragic role of the American superpower in the postwar epoch, one must abandon the liberal fiction of perpetual peace and recognize the structural necessity of conflict and enmity in the international order.
The United States, in taking up the mantle of global arbiter, sacrificed its own political innocence and became the executor of a grim logic: to maintain peace through the perpetual preparation for war, and frequently, through war itself.
In 1945, America stood as the unrivaled titan among ruined nations. Europe lay in ashes; Asia trembled in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The old continental powers — Britain, France, Germany — had exhausted their military and moral capital.
In this vacuum of power, the United States emerged as the only force capable of imposing a new order. What began as Wilson’s brainchild in the League of Nations became the United Nations. But superpower is not a condition of ease; it is a hardship. Victory requires power that demands sacrifice. It demands that the hegemon not merely defend its own interests but assume responsibility for the order of the world itself. In Schmittian terms, the United States became the katechon — the restrainer of chaos, the dam against the flood of revolutionary disorder, first in the form of Soviet communism and later in the myriad manifestations of anti-systemic revolt and Islamic jihad.
Pax Americana was therefore not the fruit of a universal consensus, but the product of concrete decisions. These decisions entailed the mobilization of vast material and human resources, the construction of a permanent military-industrial complex, and the commitment to an indefinite series of military engagements. The American republic, once a nation wary of foreign entanglements, was transfigured into a global Leviathan. In assuming the right to police the world, America surrendered the dream of peace at home. It sacrificed, as all empires must, the tranquility of its own polity for the maintenance of order abroad.
This dialectic of sacrifice and power is most starkly revealed in the sequence of wars that punctuate the American century, which took shape in the final decades of the 20th century and into this 21st century. The Korean War (1950-1953), often framed as a limited police action, was in truth a foundational moment. It signaled America’s commitment to contain its enemy wherever they appeared and at whatever cost. Dominio theories led to high-stakes gambles. The war required the rapid remobilization of American industry and the permanent stationing of troops across Eurasia. The armistice achieved in Korea did not restore peace but instead institutionalized a permanent state of tension. As the Cold War froze this stasis in place, it formed expectations that demanded continuous military readiness.
The Vietnam War deepened this logic. Here, the American sacrifice was measured not only in blood and treasure but in the corrosion of domestic political unity. We spent more time and treasure fighting amongst ourselves rather than rallying against a common enemy. John F. Kennedy was a cold warrior after all, who supported military actions both in the east and within our western hemisphere. By Nixon and LBJ, our commitments expanded and polarization deepened.
Even as Vietnam became a synonym for quagmire and folly, it also served to harden America’s military superiority. The technological innovations born in Southeast Asia — from air mobility tactics to electronic warfare — would later underpin American dominance in subsequent conflicts. Our geopolitical prominence was coupled with the advent and rise of wireless communications and the increased role of the media complex. These conflated the role of the CIA and domestic politics when it came to structuring international affairs.
While America escalated its military capabilities, the rest of the world, exhausted by war or cowed by dependence, gradually disarmed or allowed its military institutions to atrophy. Reagan’s triumph over the USSR was a function of our economic growth and moral strength.
Western Europe, shielded by the American nuclear umbrella and NATO's security guarantees, transformed itself into a post-military society. Japan, under the pacifist constitution imposed by American occupation, renounced offensive war altogether. Even the Soviet Union, after its initial postwar expansion, found itself locked into an unsustainable arms race and space race that sapped its economic vitality and ultimately contributed to its collapse. Reagan explicated this failure, and Clinton spent the peace dividend on corruption and immorality.
America’s quest for global peace has paradoxically required relentless military engagement and innovation. As the United States forged a robust security framework, other nations increasingly stepped back from maintaining their military strength, opting instead to rely on or align with America's protective umbrella. This dynamic underscores a compelling truth: to sustain a peaceful world order, America has had to lead with unmatched military prowess, shaping a landscape where its allies and partners depend on its strength for stability.
The paradox is that America’s very military superiority, achieved through sacrifice and struggle, became the condition for the relative pacification of much of the world. The peace that Europe and East Asia enjoy is not the result of some Kantian federation of republics but rather the consequence of American hegemony backed by overwhelming military power.
But this state of affairs is not without its dangers today.
The concentration of military capability in one actor, even if that actor claims universal benevolent motives, creates a structural imbalance. It tempts the US toward interventionism and invites resentment and resistance from those who chafe under its dominance. The so-called “wars of choice” that America prosecuted in the post-Cold War era — from the Gulf War of 1991 to Kosovo in 1998 and the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001-2022 — reveal the compulsive character of our power. Even when we pull out sloppily because of the incompetence of Joe Biden and his cronies, the vacuum creates massive disruptions. We must not only respond to threats but also continuously reaffirm our dominance lest our authority erode. Each war thus becomes both a demonstration and a renewal of our supremacy.
Moreover, the universalization of America’s friend-enemy distinctions — enshrined in doctrines of global counter-terrorism, worldwide illusions of free trade, and humanitarian intervention — leads to a dangerous depoliticization of war. The three prominent conflicts today, Ukraine vs. Russia, Israel vs. Iranian proxies, and China vs. the USA, all take on existential stakes and foster accusations of illegitimacy.
Conflict is no longer seen as the tragic clash of sovereign decisions but is framed in moral-legal terms as the suppression of evil by the forces of good. This new and massive juridification of war creates a legal framework to prosecute bad actors. It defines criminality as anti-democratic. It strips conflict of its existential character and masks the reality of power behind the veil of these supposedly universal norms. If we must impose order at the point of a gun and require compliance with an overly bland and neutral standard that saps the strength and vitality of participants, we will not be able to quell this violence. This condition is not an evangelical mission motivated by righteousness, it is a globalist agenda for control.
Over the last 75 years, America assumed the role of global sovereign precisely because it had the capacity and the will to decide the state of exception on a world scale. We alone were able to determine when peace ends and war begins. We decided who was to be labeled as humanity’s enemy and which human rights were defended. If we did a good job at this, one could make the case that we provided a net benefit. And, in some cases this we did act as an honorable global police force. But this is not a neutral or selfless act, despite the rhetoric of liberal internationalism. It is the exercise of concrete power, which, like all such power, generates enmity as well as allegiance.
Jesus once said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places (Matthew 24:6-7 6).” Isn’t this our daily news?
The price of America’s superpower status, therefore, is perpetual engagement in the cycle of war and peace, where peace is never final but always provisional, secured through superior force and the readiness to use it. The heavy sacrifices made — in lives lost, wealth expended, and political stability compromised — are not anomalies but necessities based on the role that history and decision thrust upon the United States.
Yet, this system contains within it the seeds of its exhaustion. The asymmetry of military power, which once ensured order, may provoke new challengers such as China, Iran, and Russia. It could also spark political rivalry within the EU as they seek to continue to use our power for their benefit. The internal strain of maintaining a global security apparatus may erode the domestic political foundations as well because disagreements at this level are severe. Situational ethics that accompany America’s self-conception as a global guardian may blind us to the realities of emergent multipolarity and new challenges.
Pax Americana stands as both an epoch of triumph and a tragedy — a manifestation of the enduring truth that peace is never the natural condition of mankind but is always the product of decision, sacrifice, and the hard, often bloody, assertion of order over chaos.